The weekend started off with my presentation Friday night at 7:00 for Nana’s Poker Classic. “Nana”, otherwise known as Coatta Wilder, sponsors tournaments across the country on a regular basis. Many of the participants play poker at TruePoker.com and I had the privilege to meet the owner of True Poker.

I was the guest speaker for their cocktail party so it was a nice environment to speak in. Nothing like a few drinks to make me sound more interesting. It was truly a great group of people and they made me feel very welcome. I spoke about strategy differences between online poker games and live poker playing, fielded some questions, and then let everyone get back to their cocktails. It is always encouraging to see people nod their head in agreement as I am speaking about some of the poker strategy adjustments you need to make on the Internet. I was hoping to get in a poker game that night but was feeling a little under the weather so I went back to my room afterwards and made it an early night.

On Saturday, I played in poker Nana’s first event, a $67 limit poker event with about 50 poker players. The blinds sure did go up fast. I don’t think I ever managed to get a decent size stack. At one point I was down to three chips but got lucky on a few hands and managed to make the final table. I was short-stacked and had to make a move with A9s a couple of spots before the blinds were coming. A couple of callers and a flop of 9 high looked very good. Unfortunately, AJ caught a backdoor straight and I finished in 7th place.

After the poker tournament, I moved over to Sam’s Town who was having a no-limit poker tournament that evening. This was a $40 buyin with one $20 rebuy and there were 86 poker players. I can’t remember starting out a poker tournament with such a dry run of cards. I don’t remember ever having anything better than A9 or 88 until the final table. But somehow, every time I had to go allin I survived and again made to the final table. This time I finished in 6th place. I will be posting the poker hand I went out on in the poker Forum over the next few days for your input.

Now it’s time to do a little ranting about the Las Vegas poker tournament payout structures. I finished 7th out of 50 and 6th out of 86 and what did I win for my efforts?...$20! And I only won $20 because everyone in the final table in the NL event agreed to pay 6th through 10th place $50 each. The poker room was only going to pay five spots! I was really more interested in gaining some practice but those payout structures are very top-heavy compared to those in Internet poker…and I think Internet poker payout structures are too top-heavy, lol.

The next morning I spoke at the Playing to Win symposium at Sam's Town sponsored by Victory Poker which is an online poker club and community. Many of the poker players play at Absolute Poker. The turnout for the poker symposium was very disappointing but the turnout for the poker tournament that afternoon was much better with about 70 poker players.

The other speakers included Tom McEvoy, 1983 World Series of Poker champion and poker author, as well as Susie Isaacs, two-time women’s poker champion. It was great being able to meet both of these well-respected poker players in the poker community.

The highlight of the day was being able to meet a couple of poker Forum members, Halashton and Bubba Jones. It was great speaking with them and now I can associate some faces with names. Halashton again outlasted me in a poker tournament but unfortunately he didn’t make the final table. Hopefully they enjoyed my presentation and I hope that both finish their weeks off profitably! Meeting them was a great experience and made me think that it would be great to someday host a live poker event for our poker Forum members.

The poker tournament that afternoon was a bust for me. I believe I won one poker hand, possibly two during the first round and that was it. I’ll be posting one of the poker hands on the poker Forum over the next couple of days that Bubba might have been wondering about.

After the poker tournament, I decided to go to the Bellagio to see if I could try to pay for my poker trip. I had enough time for about a five hour session before I needed to leave to the airport. Halashton stopped by for a couple of minutes about two hours into my session. He said he stopped by to say hello and to see if anyone “famous” was hanging around. I am not sure if he meant poker celebrity or hollywood celebrity, but I pointed out that the guy who kisses the mayor’s butt on Spin City was playing at one of the poker tables. Halashton left a few minutes later and I then realized that I had not really taken a look around the room. It was a who’s who in Hollywood. Among the celebrities I saw, the gay guy in Sex in the City, some guy who plays fat guys in movies that everyone picks on, and an actor who played a jeolous guy in America’s Sweetheart that kept saying “pussy” in a bad accent. Ok, so those guys aren’t that famous since I don’t know their names, but Leonardo Di Caprio and Toby Maguire were also playing in a NL poker game. Poker is definitely the new “in” thing.

I played poker for about five hours and had an interesting poker session. For the first couple of hours I stayed around even, which was quite frustrating given the amount of weak poker players at the table. I didn’t seem to be getting very many decent poker hands -- maybe it just appeared that way due to the slow live poker playing – but everything seemed to work right when I did play a poker hand. I remember one poker hand where I raised first-in one seat before the cutoff with 87s. I had a very tight image so I thought a raise was warranted in this spot. Both the SB and BB called to see a flop of QJx. We all checked. The turn was a 7 and it was checked to me. I bet against all of this weakness and was called by the SB. Another 7 came on the river and I won the pot. It was that kind of day.

Towards the end of the poker session I remember thinking that I hadn’t played many poker hands but I managed to win all those that I did play. I did not have one bad beat against me until my second to last poker hand. I raised from early position with AA and had three callers including the blinds. The flop was something like 852 with two clubs. The flop was four bet by the SB and I just called planning to raise the turn. The turn was a 5 and the SB checked so I bet. The SB caught a flush on the river showing 4c 3c. He had a great draw on the flop but his preflop call was questionable. In any case, I finished up $1200 for five hours of work and was pleased to be able to come home with some money in my pocket. I don’t remember making one mistake during the session so that was quite encouraging.

Overall it was a great weekend. I had some success in the poker tournaments, the speaking engagements went well, and I got to meet some well-respected people in the poker community as well as a couple of poker Forum members…and of course I came home a richer man, :). Not a bad weekend at all.